Sugar coated pharmaceuticals are old in the art, the sugar coating generally being used to mask the taste of the usually insoluble pharmaceutical core. The sugar coating, however, is usually applied to a core which has previously been coated with a sealing coat to prevent inter mixture of the pharmaceutical containing core and the sugar coat. Note, for example, Example 12 of U.S. Pat. No. 4,904,477 to Hoet al.
Other patents of interest are U.S. Pat. No. 4,946,684 to Blank et al and U.S. Pat. No. 4,371,516 to Gregory et al described therein. These patents deal with Fast Dissolving Dosage Forms comprising an open matrix network carrying a pharmaceutical, wherein the open matrix network is comprised of a water-soluble or water-dispersable carrier material. The carrier material can be gelatin, hydrolysed dextran, dextrin or mannitol. The carrier material and the pharmaceutical, which can be chlorpheniramine maleate, are dissolved or dispersed in water, and the solution or admixture is freeze dried to form solid dosage forms.
Many patents exist which disclose coating of nonpareil seeds, i.e. sugar pellets, with a pharmaceutical as a first step in the preparation of a core for further processing to make sustained release medicaments. Such patents include U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,921,883 and 4,810,501, the first of which discloses in Example 3 the coating of nonpareil seeds in a coating pan with a coating solution, formed by dissolving chlorprophenpyridamine maleate in a 10% gelatin solution, to form drug pellets which are then coated with a fat-cellulosic coating solution to form a delayed release medicament. U.S. Pat. No. 4,810,501 discloses in the example the spray coating of nonpareil seeds with a coating solution formed by mixing with water kaolin, diphenhydramine hydrochloride and hydroxypropyl cellulose. The drug layered pellets were then coated with ethyl cellulose to form sustained release pellets. The pharmaceutical dosage forms of this invention, however, are for intermediate release.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,177,254 discloses solid penicillin dosage forms wherein an aqueous suspension of a penicillin and a binder is sprayed onto a fluidized bed comprising sucrose. The binder can be sucrose such that the binder admixed with the insoluble penicillin forms a layer on the sucrose particles in the fluidized bed, which layer comprises particles of penicillin dispersed throughout the binder. The solid dosage forms can be reconstituted with water to form a syrup.